What's the key to a memorable commencement speech? Don't even give it.

The year 2014 is shaping up to be the year that college commencement speakers are put through the wringer. Students at campuses nationwide have been routinely protesting invited speakers, usually for somehow offending liberal causes, and they're getting results.

This, in turn, has resulted in a backlash, as people both liberal and conservative worry that these students are getting needlessly censorious. Olivia Nuzzi at the Daily Beast admonished, "God forbid these delicate students should be exposed to an idea or an organization with which they disagree — at college." In an interview with Vox, liberal writer Michelle Goldberg agreed, arguing, "Practically and realistically, if you go down this road, it's going to end up working against progressive values," in part by making it harder to argue against conservative repression of free speech.

All this back-and-forth about the issues of political correctness and free speech is very interesting, but unfortunately it's all predicated on a false premise: That anyone actually listens to the commencement speaker in the first place.

Having Condi Rice or Christine Lagarde speak to a bunch of lefty college seniors should really only count as "exposing them to new ideas" if they could be bothered to pay any attention. That's not going to happen.

Along with winners of Oscars for non-acting gigs, politicians at fundraisers and fathers delivering lectures on moral uprightness to recalcitrant teenagers, commencement speakers are on the official list of people who talk while no one listens. They are there to use up time and look important while their audiences daydream, make googly eyes at each other and surreptitiously text each other to find out where the after party is.

The most famous commencement speech of all time is one that flew around the Internet and was attributed to Kurt Vonnegut. Problem is that Vonnegut didn't write it. It wasn't even a commencement speech. just a cheesy column published in the Chicago Tribune. That the most popular commencement speech of all time was a hoax should tell us all we need to know about the value of actual commencement speeches.

If you graduated college, do you remember who your commencement speaker was? The best way, maybe the only way, for a commencement speaker to get more than cursory attention from people reading the graduation program is for the students to protest the speaker. It's clear from this month's news coverage that you get a lot more attention for a speech you didn't give than one you did.

Under the circumstances, it's clear that the problem is not the politics or personal views of any commencement speakers or their audiences that may disagree. The issue here is that universities are paying top dollar to hire commencement speakers that, at best, will be tuned out by the majority of the audience as they plot out exactly what Instagram filters to use on their cap-and-gown selfies.

The solution is quite simple: Stop hiring commencement speakers. Instead, show a short reel of Buzzfeed-style cat gifs, set to whatever pop song happens to be at the top of the charts right now. It will save you money and has the benefit of being something students will actually pay attention to as they wait for their chance to snatch their diplomas.